In focus: Tory plans to cut immigration

Last updated at 15:59 24 January 2005


Tory leader Michael Howard has used a keynote speech to set out proposals for an annual limit to immigration, including a quota for asylum seekers. Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the party's proposals included:

• Pulling out of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. The Convention prevents government from immediately deporting asylum seekers with unfounded claims, Mr Davis argued.

• Legislation giving the Home Secretary discretion to sanction the immediate removal of unfounded cases.

• Given a falling number of asylum applications, a Conservative government would begin to detain, in existing asylum centres, claimants who have no documents - at least until their identity could be established.

• To break the link between claiming asylum and coming to Britain, a Conservative government would no longer consider applications filed from people already in the UK.

Instead, Britain would take "genuine" refugees in the care of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. If people did try to claim asylum here, they would be removed to centres close to their region of origin, from where their claims would be considered.

• Mr Davis said there would be quotas for the three main categories of immigration: asylum, work permits and family reunion.

Neither he nor Mr Howard would specify numbers.

Annual quotas would depend on conditions at the time, they said.

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